Advancing Health Literacy

In an age of both information saturation and stark inequities in information capital, how can public health professionals empower communities to make informed health decisions? How can healthcare providers partner with patients and communities to advance health self-efficacy, reduce barriers to equity, and repair legacies of health disparities? This course examines the concept of health literacy and its relationship to both information comprehension and health outcomes. With liberatory pedagogy as both the course teaching modality and our guiding framework, we will interrogate how disrupt power inequities and differentials in access to information through the co-creation of knowledge between health sciences professionals and the communities they serve. We will explore validated instruments to measure health literacy; its implications for empowering and communicating with the public; policies for promoting health literacy; and frameworks for developing materials for multimedia contexts. Emphasizing the necessity of advancing health literacy to create equity, we will discuss adult learning theory, trauma-informed methods for empowered health behavior and decision-making, guidance for healthcare providers, and the promotion of health-literate policies to advance a truly just and health world.